Buckeye Broadband Debuts ‘Express Streaming Video’

Buckeye Broadband has introduced Express Streaming Video, a new offering that pairs an Apple TV (fourth-generation) with a 50 Mbps high-speed Internet service along with a slim, basic TV lineup and Brainiac HomeNet, the operator’s WiFi home networking optimization and management service.

The provider’s Express Streaming Video offering starts at $100 per month and also includes a base pay TV package that includes local channels in HD that’s delivered to the customer via a Digital Transport Adapter (DTA), a channel-zapper that delivers video over the operator’s legacy QAM/MPEG transport platform, Sean Brushett, Buckeye Broadband’s chief revenue officer, told Multichannel News.

Though Toledo, Ohio-based Buckeye Broadband views this as a way to bring back cord-cutters, it also sees it as an opportunity for existing pay TV customers that are seeking alternatives to big cable packages who also want to access to a wide array of OTT video apps that are supported by Apple TV, Brushett explained in an email exchange about the new offering.

In that sense, he views the offer as a “reverse OTT” because Buckeye Broadband believes that most streamers will use apps like Netflix and Hulu as a primary video source and complement it with access to the operator’s Limited Basic Cable service, which offers about 40 channels, including the Big 4 broadcast networks and their associated secondary digital must-carry channels.

The DTA, used to access that basic lineup, “is ‘over the top’ of their streaming solution,” Brushett added.

“Increasingly, our customers explore streaming options like Netflix and Hulu. At the same time, they’re unwilling to walk away from high quality local HD channels, so this product combines the best of both,” Brushett said in a press release. “We clearly recognize the need to facilitate choice and control for customers and we welcome the opportunity to show them how new sources of video can personalize their viewing experience.”